Synopses & Reviews

Synopsis

Excerpt from Tithes Ordinary and Extraordinary: How to Deal With Them, the Mark Lane Express Prize Essays

Before Commutation, tithes, though an annoyance to the farmer, were in their ultimate incidence a tax on the consumer. By the Act of 1836 they became a rent-charge whether paid by landlord or tenant in the first instance, they became, theoretically at least, a deduction from rent. How were they a tax on the consumer? It may be asked. A general answer will suffice for the present purpose. The Corn Laws kept the price of grain at a high level, and limited the supply from abroad. One-tenth of the gross produce of the land went to the tithe-owner - under which designation I include throughout this paper the lay impropriator. A tenth of the gross produce was obviously much more than a tenth of the farmer's net income, the other nine-tenths having to bear rent, taxes, and all the costs of production. It was also obviously much more than a tenth of the rent. Generally speaking it may have been about a fifth, or in the ratio of 20 per cent. To what the landlord received as the hire of average land. The tithe was almost entirely net income, and formed a very heavy burden on the agricultural interest. On in ferior lands, the produce of which was just sufficient to bear the cost of cultivation, it took precedence of the landlord's rent. Land could not be kept in cultivation, indeed, unless nine-tenths of the produce were sufficient to pay the farmer's costs, leaving one-tenth for the tithe-owner, and nothing for the landlord and on these terms the interest of the landlord was against corn-growing. The land was to him more pro fitable as sheep walk or rabbit-warren, when, but for the tithe, it would have yielded crops with a margin of profit and rent. Independently, therefore, of the peculiarly oh noxious manner in which it was levied, the tithe impeded and hampered agricultural enterprise. When relief came an im portant change was at once apparent. Whether land fell out of cultivation or additional land was brought under til'age, the rent charge was now an immovable quantity. Under these altered.

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